Our culture has a premise that is the basis of the infant formula industry. Women can't breastfeed or they don't want to breastfeed. Throughout patents on infant formula this premise is the reason for creating a better, safer infant formula. Yet who examines the premise? Who says, why don't women want to breastfeed? Why is breastfeeding so difficult nowadays? Well, we could suggest that infant feeding is now a choice to all women, not just a select few wealthy women. An industry stepped in and created choice; to free women from the burden of their biology. Free at last, free at last, thank god for men (actually women are inventors, too) and their inventions. Choice is not what nature intended. Choice is what the corporate world wants because it makes money. Of course, when we circumvent nature there are biological consequences to the mother and her baby, and to society at large. Those consequences are sicker children, sicker mothers (more breast and ovarian cancers). Higher need for artificial birth control measures, since exclusive breastfeeding prevents ovulation. So we are talking higher health costs. Higher health costs benefit who? The pharmaceutical industry benefits because there is a need for more drugs, more testing, more devices. Choice means mothers can work and be free of the burden of childcare. They can work to pay the babysitter, one of the ironies for women whose jobs pay minimum wage. Of course children housed in daycare are sicker, so that is another burden for families. But sicker children mean that we must have more drugs and more vaccines. The logic of the current ideology of female liberation seems rather horrifying when one looks at the stark reality. Actually, if one takes a look at the patents on human milk components or on infant formula, one is in awe of what our science seems to know regarding human milk. It has the power to heal, to effect the DNA. It is a food, a medicine, a vaccination. Yet so few people seem to know how remarkable this substance is instead we read and hear the words, "yucky" or "grouse" when people discuss breastmilk or breastfeeding.
Here is another patent to ponder. Patent # 6365177 called "Insulin supplemented infant formula," owned by Insotech (Maabarot, Israel) inventor Naim Shehadeh filed in 2002. Remember that here in the US, the Breastfeeding Ad Campaign in 2003 was watered down because the infant formula industry and the AAP believed that there was not enough research on the risks of infant formula. From the patent:
"Many studies show that type I diabetes is related to cow's milk consumption and neonatal feeding practices (2,10). In the case-control studies (including a study conducted in the Juvenile Diabetes Unit of the Rambam Medical Center, Haifa, Israel), patients with type I diabetes were more likely to have been breast-fed for less than 3 months and to have been exposed to cow's milk proteins before 3 months of age (3). Moreover, the immune system of patients with IDDM recognizes cow's milk proteins, as demonstrated by antibodies assays and lymphocytes activity tests (11). These data emphasize the importance of diet and orally administered proteins on the development of autoimmune diabetes. "
This has become a product owned by Israel's Nutrinia called InsuMeal (company owned by New Generation Technologies and Maabarot Products (Materna infant formula). It is a bioactive insulin. "Insulin is 100 times more concentrated in the first milk a mother gives her baby than in the blood. Nature must have a reason for enriching the first milk and helping the newborn get over the shock of the first 24 hours." quote from Shehadeh at Nutrinia dated 2007
http://www.nutrinia.com/press.html
Materna Labs, maker of infant formula, controlled by Maaborat Products was acquired by Nestle in 2010. I don't know if the bioactive insulin was put into infant formula--it was being tested on premature babies back in 2007. But if one believes that industry knows that infant formula increases the risk of diabetes, should we thank that industry for creating something better? Or should we be troubled by what we didn't know before the industry figured out there was a problem? Choice costs money and lives. Should we question choice or go on creating, reformulating infant formula because of its adverse effects?
Copyright 2010 Valerie W. McClain
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